Fogon Asado, an intimate Buenos Aires steakhouse built around a communal bar and an open-fire grill, has been named the world’s best fine-dining restaurant for the second consecutive year in Tripadvisor’s 2026 Travelers’ Choice Awards: Best of the Best Restaurants.
The tasting menu at Fogon Asado walks diners through provoleta, ribeye and tira de asado, paired with an Argentine wine list, according to the restaurant’s Tripadvisor listing, which describes it as eight courses; the restaurant’s own website currently advertises the same menu as nine courses. It holds a 4.9-star rating from more than 4,000 reviews.
The win headlines a 25-restaurant global fine-dining ranking drawn from traveler reviews and ratings collected between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, combined with an additional editorial review process, Tripadvisor said. Winners rank among the top 1% of Tripadvisor’s roughly 8 million restaurant listings worldwide, the company said.
“Food is at the heart of how we experience a destination,” Laurel Greatrix, Tripadvisor’s chief communications officer, said in a statement announcing the awards. Ms. Greatrix added that the winning restaurants “can become a highlight of a trip.”
Argentina’s steakhouse strength
Argentina placed three restaurants in the global top 10: Fogon Asado at No. 1, Abrasado in Guaymallen at No. 6, and El Mercado in Buenos Aires at No. 10 — the strongest showing of any single country in the top tier and a marker of the country’s asado tradition drawing international attention.
Two U.S. entries
Only two U.S. restaurants cracked the global top 25. Ristorante Paoletti, an Italian mainstay in the mountain town of Highlands, North Carolina, landed at No. 16 worldwide — and was named Tripadvisor’s top-ranked U.S. fine-dining restaurant separately, according to the company’s announcement. Michael Anthony’s Cucina Italiana, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, came in at No. 23.
A Michelin footnote
Tripadvisor’s rankings are built entirely from traveler reviews and ratings, not professional critics’ guides. One winner happens to carry outside recognition as well: Anne-Sophie Pic in Valence, France, at No. 24, holds a Michelin three-star rating — the only restaurant on the list with that distinction, though it played no part in the Tripadvisor ranking itself.
A global spread
The 25 winners span 18 countries and five continents, from Vietnam and Cambodia to Aruba and Turkey. Tripadvisor now generates the short descriptions accompanying each listing using AI trained on traveler reviews, a disclosure that appears at the bottom of the rankings page.
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